What’s your life worth? It’s the question everyone should ask themselves in considering our front-page story yesterday about Dave, the bystander who tackled and arrested a jewelry store robber armed with a gun.

Is it worth risking your life for jewelry? Is it worth the vehicle the robber was trying to carjack from a woman when Dave intervened? Or is it worth the principle that bad guys shouldn’t get away with crimes?

The flood of people praising Dave would like answer yes to those questions, particularly the last one, but they’d be wrong.

There is no question that Dave showed tremendous courage in grabbing the robber — and no one should come down hard on him for making a quick decision in the heat of a difficult situation. But he also revealed a lack of wisdom.

It’s one thing to take action to protect another person from a criminal act, but quite another to try to arrest a desperate criminal who has a gun. Dave is very lucky that when the gun went off inside the woman’s car during the struggle when they were all piled on top of each other that the bullet didn’t hit the woman, him or even the robber.

No life is worth losing over some jewelry, or a car or even the principal of catching a crook. Cars and baubles can be replaced, but not lives. Dave should have told the woman to give up her car, noted the licence plate and called police.

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